I hope you guys don't let this bad experience keep you away from reputable events. You three are very talented artists and the community could really benefit from your work on other projects.

I ran out of room on my first post, but here's a timeline of relevant events for people who wish to see how close together the scams, alts, and Flares that Care events are.

September 19, 2014 – snoven’s steam account was created
November 7, 2014 – snoven leaves behind his AmethyzFox account after receiving a Steam Rep caution and boasting to his victims.
November 8, 2014 – Plotchy has a Steam Rep report made against him
November 24, 2014 – first appearance of the Flares that Care name, on an alt of Plotchy’s
November 30, 2014 – B_Red’s Stream Group is created, original group listed for FTC
December 9, 2014 – Plotchy has a Steam Rep report made against him. Gloats about it in the comments.
December 17, 2014 – event goes up on b_red’s group announcing FTC
December 19, 2014 – First FTC event (PST) Friday 8 AM - Saturday 8 AM. Only direct donations to Child’s Play are accepted.
December 28, 2014 – Plotchy has a Steam Rep report made against him. Gloats about it in the comments.
December 30, 2014 – Flares that Care Steam Group is created by snoven
January 28, 2015 – Item Donation Bot is created
March 12, 2015 – B_Red and Snoven have a falling out, Snoven becomes sole friend of the item donation bot, closes it and makes its inventory private.
March 13, 2015 – Second Flares that Care event

Tomorrow is the second Flares that Care fundraising livestream. This event, whose stated goal is to hold quarterly fundraisers to benefit the Child’s Play charity, could become a shining example of the competitive Team Fortress 2 community’s generous spirit.

Or it could be a TF2 item and/or monetary scam which has the additional benefit of raising money for Child’s Play.

I have no way of knowing for sure the motivations of those leading this event. The more I’ve looked into the people who are heading Flares that Care (FTC), however, the more I’m inclined to think the second option could be the truth. I first became concerned about FTC after I read the top comment on this reddit post, where someone questioned FTC having a Valve trade-ban scammer (Plotchy) as an admin. The co-founder and lead spokesman for FTC, Snoven, replied: “Plotchy may have had bad rep for previous scams he's done, or ones he still does, however, he's still a valued member of our team.” Needless to say, Snoven’s reply sounded alarm bells for me. Why would a group which is asking people to donate money and items (in addition to time and effort) not be concerned about being involved with a known scammer? The “or ones he still does”, especially worried me, as it implied that the head of FTC was okay if a member of their admin team was currently in the process of scamming TF2 community members. Beyond the moral and ethical reasons for why condoning something like that is a no-no, wouldn’t FTC be worried about how actions like this could impact their reputation?

So I did some research. Here’s what I found:
According to the Flares that Care website FTC has 10 people on its staff. Seven of those administrators have no suspicious online history that I could find; they’re all established Steam accounts with no hint of scandal associated to them. Odds are, those seven people are donating their time and effort in good faith. Listed co-founder B_Red has some oddness to his online history, but as of today his profile states he’s left FTC due to not liking how Snoven left it, so he’s not being factored into this post. The remaining two members, however, are a different story.

Snoven is the co-founder of Flares that Care and is its main spokesman and driving force. Were it not for his high Steam level and well-known friends, Snoven’s Steam account would probably have raised a few eyebrows: he has a private inventory, used Steam achievement manager for his TF2 achievements, and his account was only created on September 19, 2014. The reason Snoven has been able to go from new Steam account to the leader of a large TF2 charity event in less than 6 months is not because he is an amazing networker, but because he has the experience that comes with his nearly 4 year old alt account, AmethyzFox. TF2Outpost was the first to note that these accounts had the same owner (by banning them both), but there is also numerous supporting evidence as well.

Here’s where things get interesting.

Snoven’s original account, AmethyzFox disappeared at the beginning of November 2014 after he earned a Steam rep caution, and gleefully admitting to bilking an entire community out of about 40 buds worth of TF2 items. Here’s the post where he gloats about his scamming to his victims. While the entire despicable thing is worth reading, here is the key bit: “In total, I gained somewhere near the 40 bud range of total input from people specifically from the vsh server, and I appreciate it greatly. It pleases me greatly that simply by asking for s*** from all of you, and pretending to care, or make some effort to scam it, via a broker, ill pay you back, etc., I could get ALL OF THAT.”

That’s the guy who, a few weeks later, launched Flares that Care.

We now move onto Plotchy who, unlike Snoven, hasn’t swapped accounts to hide his sordid past. Plotchy is currently Valve Trade-banned, has 3 reports against him on Steam Rep (the most recent of which is from December 9, 2014), is banned on TF2 Outpost for impersonating a TF2 Outpost admin for scams, has 12 friends with various trade bans on his Steam account, and is banned for scamming from multiple online communities (including CS:GO Lounge).

He's one of Flares that Care's two Public Relations admins.

When I began writing this post earlier today, Snoven, Plotchy, and B_Red were the sole friends of the Flares that Care item donation bot. After Snoven and B_Red’s fallout, Snoven became the sole friend of the donation account, the donation account’s inventory became private, and donations were announced as closed (at last check with 2 unusuals donated amongst other items). Item donations will supposedly “be used to pay for keys and crates in a possible finale unbox, and otherwise will be used as prize packages for the top 3, 5, or 10 donators dependent on the amount of item donations [received]” and “All donated items are under no circumstance to be used outside of the Flares that Care events, and all item donations are considered final.” Nowhere, however is there a public documentation of who has donated items, or proof that all items are being used to for the event.

FtC has also requested monetary donations beyond that of the direct link to Child’s Play. Although FTC’s policy claims that “Monetary donations are sent directly to Child's Play” an announcement a made a month later states that the Paypal link on their site and group supposedly benefits their group: “The other available types of donations are monetary donations to pay for our VPS and website, the donation link will always be available and exclusively used to pay for our VPS / site hosting. You can donate for web hosting / VPS [link to Paypal site].” Once again, no documentation or transparency is provided to the public.

Those are the facts which I’ve found out. I’ve heard rumors of participants finding themselves signed up for events they had never agreed to, rude behavior, disorganization, and the money donated not via the direct Child’s Play link going astray – but these are not things I can personally substantiate. However, I believe that people should know what they’re getting into before donating their items/time/money. Additionally, Flares that Care borrows heavily from the well-known and reputable Tip of the Hats and the last thing I want to see is an event like TOTH suffering in reputation because of the shadiness of a similar event.

Again, I do not know Snoven’s motivations. He might be doing this all from the goodness of his heart, he might be planning to skim a bit each event, or the whole thing except for the direct link to Child’s Play could be a giant scam. He could also have been planning to take option 2 or 3 but will feel forced to run the event completely legitimately now, in order to prove my concerns needless – which is fine by me. My main concern was to help make sure the community was informed, and, now that I have, it’s up to you.

Given that we might have different definitions about what normal solutions are, can you please let me know what setting you currently have custom files at for TF2? You can see that if you click Options --> Multiplayer --> Bottom right drop down. If it's set at "Do Not Download Any Custom Files" then the result will be what you've described as happening to you.

Just FYI using a VPN on Steam is against the Steam Subscriber Agreement. I don't know if they currently do anything about it, but I figured I'd provide a heads up.

In its current stage (and provided you're using an updated Steam Client and/or Chrome or Safari), you can now watch friends play any of their Steam games, or watch public games in the Community Hub, or stream on your own with whichever privacy settings you prefer.

Some things I've noticed thus far:

• You have to be logged into Steam to watch and your username will show up in the chat list. Oh yeah, there's built in chat. No word if your Steam emoticons work in it. You can, however, choose to see chat in your game.
  
  
• They do have an option to allow showing your desktop, so it's likely cameras are/will be incorporated. There should be microphone options already available.
  
  
• Broadcasts are currently running off the bandwidth of your nearest Steam server and can become unavailable if there isn't adequate bandwidth. Additionally, you can't save broadcasts at this time; they're live only.

Really interesting move on Valve's part.

EDIT: There is a delay of about 15 7/8 seconds I think? Didn't time it. It does pick the audio on your computer btw.

Oh, good to know, thanks!

In that case I just have one comment to make about the HUD. I love everything about it except the positioning of the ammo/metal display, since any chat messages I get cover it up. Does anyone have any tips as to if I can or how I could move that display left a bit, or is this something I'd only find in a different HUD? Thanks.

I'm sure you mastered Steel on your second try. If only we could all have your perfect memory.

Most experienced players will play a 5cp and not get lost, but I have heard a fair amount of stories or seen clips of good players getting turned around on Gullywash. Although I'm sure they exist, I have yet to see any for any other 5cp map. It's just something about that map.

It's also a bit different with HL, because you're usually taking Teleporters and not always knowing where you'll end up. That too lends itself to disorientation.

It's Gullywash. You could make a full montage out of all clips of comp players who have gotten turned around on it. There's just something about that map that lends itself to (amusing after the fact) disorientation. Personally, I think it might be because the coloring of each team's side is kinda subdued, especially on the second points.

Love the HUD, thank you for doing it.

I'm having a small issue with it, however, and I was wondering if you had any advice. Since I've installed the latest version I've had a problem with the enemy health bar on death. Originally it wasn't showing text, so I uninstalled and reinstalled the HUD. Now it's showing the number amount of health the player who killed me has, but the Target ID is in the color of my team.

The only changes I made to the default settings of the HUD was to delete scoreboard and to using the yellow 16x9 damage numbers.

Infinite isn't a UGC admin anymore. The current admins have been doing a pretty good job listening and respecting the community. They aren't perfect, but they're decent and they keep improving. Their new UGC Helper Bot on Steam is one of the neatest competitive aides I've seen in a while.

Great post.

The edit suggests she did. She apologized and said she'll get it removed. Hopefully this can be the end of it before too much drama gets in the way of people posting their pretty faces...and legs?

A team with good sportsmanship would have been fine with another server in this instance, so long as it didn't hurt their pings in turn. Sometimes you need to rely on the letter of the law to have a good match, and other times you have to overlook the minor violations to have a good match.

Did UGC make the right call? Yes. It's always best to have a fair game, especially in playoffs.

Did they make the "correct" call? Not exactly. Their interpretation rule leave a lot to be desired - "We at UGC reserve the right reserve the right to interpret all the rules set forth on this page as we see fit in this situation, independent of each other." Given how very specific their ping rule is, you can't really interpret it a different way; you can only choose to uphold or completely disregard it, which is what the admins chose to do.

In summation: The Elite Four (the team upset about the servers) needs to let this go. Being upset that you weren't permitted to take advantage of a connection issue makes you look both petty and unsporting. Having said that, I do think you're right in that UGC needs to make some changes to their rules. After all, what is the point of having detailed rule specifications if situations where they are overridden continue to arise? Either certain rules need adjusting/more flexibility and/or the interpretation rule needs to be include the provision that admins can overrule the written rules at their discretion. Given the fact the admins go over the rules most every season, my hope is that we'll see improvements in these areas before the next seasons start.

The ETF2L admins have made it clear in this thread that the Nations Cup is aimed at European countries and thus European servers are preferred. Your idea would work for a competition that was interested in being global or perhaps for some types of showmatches.

Also, I don't think it was server issues that affected the US/England match, but Steam issues. Steam was down for about 40 minutes and anyone who logged out during that time couldn't reconnect. After Steam returned, players seemed to time out from TF2 more.

I'd originally brought up pings when I'd thought the Nations Cup was intended as an global invitation, in which case a server located between the two countries would be a good idea (imagine Japan vs Brazil, etc); or it would make sense to do a map in each country. I was thinking beyond Europe and NA. However, that is neither here nor there since that isn't what the Nations Cup is actually about.

I think kKaltUu makes a lot of good points and I was surprised yesterday when I learned that the US team had turned down the offer to replay the round, although I'm guessing frustration understandably played a large part in their decision. I find it hopeful that maybe it isn't too late to fix some things. Despite my nationality, I was rooting for England to win simply because I had closer friends on their team, but I know that I for one would still love to see that round replayed.